The New York Post recently compiled a list of the things that the New York
City Council tried to ban - not all successfully - just in 2006 alone: pit
bulls; trans-fats; aluminum baseball bats; the purchase of tobacco by 18- to
20-year-olds; foie gras; pedicabs in parks; new fast-food restaurants (but
only in poor neighborhoods); lobbyists from the floor of council chambers;
lobbying city agencies after working at the same agency; vehicles in Central
and Prospect parks; cell phones in upscale restaurants; the sale of pork
products made in a processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., because of a
unionization dispute; mail-order pharmaceutical plans; Candy-flavored
cigarettes; gas-station operators adjusting prices more than once daily;
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus; Wal-Mart.

On Jan. 2 here in Washington, D.C., the city council's smoking ban was
extended to bars and nightclubs. Even private clubs, where members must pay
through the teeth to associate voluntarily, are forbidden to allow smoking
on their own property. In some states, you can't smoke in your car if young
children are present - your own children that is. In California, outdoor
smoking bans are all the rage. In 2005, a Pennsylvania legislator received
national attention for his effort to mandate that all dogs must wear seat
belts in cars. He got the idea from the winner of his annual "There Ought to
Be a Law" contest, a busybody kid who thought it was hypocritical that
canines be exempt from mandatory seat-belt laws. My daughter seems well on
track to spend her entire childhood in a world where eating a peanut product
would be as unthinkable as lighting up a stogie.

In "Democracy in America," Alexis de Tocqueville warns: "It must not be
forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor
details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less
necessary in great things than in little ones. ..."

"Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole
community indiscriminately," he continued. "It does not drive men to
resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to
surrender the exercise of their own will." He goes on to note that in the
"great things," the burden of (temporarily) lost freedom must inevitably
fall "upon a small number of men." For example, in war we understand that
some men (and now women) surrender the bulk of their liberties to protect
the liberties of everybody else.

This is a typically penetrating insight, and one with new relevance these
days. This country seems to have inverted de Tocqueville's hierarchy. On
countless fronts, the natural pastures of daily liberty have become
circumscribed by dull-witted but well-meaning bureaucrats slapping down the
paving stones of good intentions on the road to Hell.

The rule of thumb for a free society should be that it infringes liberties
rarely, but when it does so it is for important reasons. Today, that thumb
has been cast down, Caesar-like, pointing in the opposite direction. We have
democratized the small assaults on freedom so that everyone must endure
them, while we caterwaul about the tyranny of any real inconvenience that
might fall "disproportionately" on the few. We ban using trans fats for
millions but flinch at the idea that some kid might have to endure the
Pledge of Allegiance or a moment of silence in school if it conflicts with
his conscience. Everyone must surrender his shoes, his regular-sized
toothpaste and shampoo at the airport, but we man the barricades to protect
a few young Muslim men from being inconvenienced for an extra five minutes
at the airport.

Free speech is most restricted where it is most important - in political
contests near Election Day - while it is maximized to an absurd level at the
fringes of culture and decency. Banning "hate speech" from everybody's lips
is a progressive priority, but electronic eavesdropping on a few terrorists
is an impermissible leap down the slippery slope to the police state.

Of course, there are legitimate objections to infringements of liberty or
principle on what de Tocqueville would call the "great things." What is so
disturbing is how few legitimate objections are raised about the "little
things." And I can't help but shake the feeling that civilizations fall
apart, or get plowed under by the wheels of history, when they fail to
understand these distinctions. One of my favorite sayings is that America
can choke on a gnat, but it swallows tigers whole. These days, we seem to be
choking on the tigers while our bellies fill with gnats.